


Nothing Was Real (Until I Met You)

by elfiepike



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfiepike/pseuds/elfiepike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A treehouse this size and you don't have a guest room or something?" Ice Queen complained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Was Real (Until I Met You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ijemanja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/gifts).



> The underage warning is because Fionna is canonically fourteen, but the age difference isn't really a focus of the story.
> 
> This directly references 3.9 "Fionna and Cake," obviously, but also some of 5.40 "The Play Date," and various plot elements/Adventure Time artifacts and thingamabobs from before that in Finn & Jake's universe. It is neither spoilery for nor compliant to the comics.
> 
> Thanks to ♥ for beta-reading. Ijemanja, it was super-fun to write this and I hope you enjoy it!

"And--here," Fionna said, pushing her bangs off her forehead with the back of one hand and gesturing with the other to a nook of the treehouse where she and Cake had set up one of the couches with a pillow and some blankets. There was even a shower curtain strung up on some twine for privacy.

"A treehouse this size and you don't have a guest room or something?" Ice Queen complained, but she was more concerned about what was going on inside her body, like there was gas building up inside her ribcage, but in a way that was not entirely unenjoyable, and where the gas wasn't actually gas but was maybe an emotion or something equally unbearable.

"Hey! If you don't like it, you'd--" Cake started, standing on top of Fionna's backpack, her fur puffing up around her neck. Ice Queen honestly still felt meanly proud that she had managed to fool even Cake with her ruse at Prince Gumball's ball. It would be just like the over-protective beast to hold a grudge about that kind of thing.

"Cake! It's okay. It's only that we have a lot of treasure," Fionna explained. "Plus Beemo gets upset when we move too many things around without asking first."

"I suppose it's better than sleeping outside," Ice Queen said, pulling her hair over one shoulder and sitting gingerly on the makeshift bed. "Oh, is that my keytar?"

"Yeah! It's a little water-logged, but Banana Woman is a wiz with electronics and fixed it up pretty well."

Ice Queen turned it on and played a few chords, pretending she didn't notice when Fionna sat down next to her and watched, Cake restrained on her lap with cuddles. Ice Queen wanted to show off, suddenly and fiercely. She wanted to play something for Fionna that would make Fionna's eyes light up the way they had during her date with--with _Prince Gumball_ , but Ice Queen had only taught herself a few power ballads so far, ones she performed for the penguins when they wanted to rock out, and that didn't fit the mood at all.

The mood, the mood! _What_ mood! She slammed her hands down on the keys, the sound almost as jarring as all the things sparking inside her head, and Fionna lept up at once, Cake stretching out from one blink to the next to wrap around her head.

"Well, uh, it's kind of late!" Fionna said, backing up, almost tripping on the coffee table in her hurry. "Cake and I were gonna go to bed."

"We have to get our beauty rest," Cake added, tail puffed out.

"Real beauty hardly needs _rest_ ," Ice Queen muttered, feeling strangely bereft of their uneasy company--well, maybe not _Cake's_ , but. She set the keytar back down against the wall and started braiding her hair, distinctly aware of how they were both still watching her. Ice Queen thought of herself as a person destined for an audience, but this was both too intimate and not intimate enough.

She could hear them whispering, and then Cake said with all her usual tact, "Are you going to sleep in that, for real?"

"It's just that it's so fancy!" Fionna interjected.

Ice Queen stared, tying off the end of her braid with ribbon she carried around expressly for that purpose. "All my other clothes were melted or burned down by the Flame Prince," she stated, "and I think we all know why that happened."

"Oh, oh right," Fionna said, and then, quieter. "Sorry about that." Her cheeks were bright red; Ice Queen just wanted to look at them forever.

"Fionna has some extra pajamas, don't you, Fionna," Cake said loudly.

Fionna turned redder, if possible, and rushed up the ladder, leaving Ice Queen and Cake in a strange stare-off. It was only when Ice Queen heard Fionna coming back down that she realized neither she nor Cake had blinked even once, but now it felt like another point of pride--she could outstare this cat, she could! She would make--

"Here!" Fionna said, practically throwing a pile of soft ruffles and lace at Ice Queen. "I really only sleep in my footie pajamas, but Cake likes to sew and made this--and you can borrow it for as long as you need?"

Fionna pushed her bangs back from her forehead again. Ice Queen offered her goodnights and then readied herself for sleep, setting her dress over the back of the couch and tugging on the nightgown, all the while unable to stop thinking about Fionna's blushing face and footie pajamas.

*

Ice Queen dozed for a little while, but half-woke up tangled in sheets and too hot, sweating uncomfortably and finally waking completely only after some terrible and unknowable amount of time when she was convinced the blanket was trying to kill her--the blanket or maybe the nightgown itself, a size too small and gripping her tightly at her neck and wrists, constricting the air slowly from her body. Was this how Fionna was going to get the best of her, in her sleep and unawares, using gifts and kindness?

"No!" Ice Queen gasped, kicking her way out of the blankets and yanking the nightgown off so quickly that it snagged on her hair and then ripped completely at the neck. "I'm not going that easily, Fionna!"

Freed, crouched at the end of the couch on top of the pillows, Ice Queen panted a few quick breaths, calming herself slowly. What had she been thinking? Fionna had never tried to kill her before, she'd only spoiled a few dozen plans to get married and done a significant amount of property damage; the penguins were taking care of rebuilding the castle, and somehow the idea of getting married to a prince had lost its appeal recently.

"I would definitely still marry Prince Gumball," Ice Queen told herself sternly, even if it felt both untrue and like something that Marshall Lee would laugh about if she said it to him.

Calmer and finally at a more even temperature, Ice Queen shuffled out from behind the shower curtain and started to explore.

*

It turned out that, as Ice Queen had always suspected, Fionna was an honest person when she wasn't actively pranking someone: the treehouse was mostly full of treasure. Of course there was the downstairs entryway full of gold and swords and tiny figurines representing, as Ice Queen could only assume, all the people and creatures Fionna and Cake had defeated (or… _helped_ , because Fionna was apparently that kind of person? What did that even mean? Ice Queen found her heart rate increasing at the thought of figuring it out, and then had to go look at something else to calm down again).

On the second floor, in addition to the kitchen area and the sitting area and the partying area and the nook Fionna and Cake had set aside for Ice Queen, there were easily a dozen hidey-holes, but Ice Queen got bored of looking through them after three of the first four had held mostly the kinds of thing you'd expect to find in the bottom of your bag after a long trip, like lint and pennies and semi-unwrapped sticks of gum.

Ice Queen was tired by the time she hit the bathroom in her explorations, tired enough that she probably could have tried sleeping again if she could only get her mind to slow down. It seemed perfectly logical to stand in front of the sink and inspect the contents of the hidden compartment behind the mirror, and completely illogical to go back to that couch and have to think about how she ripped that ruffled thing that Fionna had never worn but--but _could_ have tried on, that she could have stood in and slept in even once before lending it out to Ice Queen--

That was when Beemo discovered her. "Oh!" Beemo's voice was just the same as always. "What are you doing in the bathroom, Ice Queen? Are you learning to brush your teeth? I can show you!"

Ice Queen had finished arranging the contents of the semi-secret nook by then, alphabetically: cotton balls, floss, q-tips, rubber bands, telescope. She slid the mirror back in place and stared at the reflection of her open mouth. Each bit of bone was just as pointed as the last time she'd checked. She had a mouth made for terrorizing; it was the first time she'd ever had second thoughts about it.

"Beemo, tell me: have you ever just--had a lot of feelings?" Ice Queen asked seriously.

"I have a lot of feelings all of the time! I am programmed to have every feeling at least once, and also videogames."

"I feel you, Beemo," Ice Queen said.

There was a creak outside of the open door, and then Fionna shouted, "YOU'RE NOT WEARING A SHIRT, WHY AREN'T YOU WEARING A SHIRT!"

Fionna was so red, even redder than she had been earlier--so red she practically matched her footie pajamas. Ice Queen felt like she was swelling up again, but not in a bloated way, just in a way where she was going to burst open in a hundred million glittery pieces. It occurred to her, watching Fionna shout for Cake with both hands covering her eyes, that maybe there was a reason she hadn't been so interested in princes lately.

Oh.

_Oh._

Cake came barrelling through, ribbon askew and almost bigger than the doorway. "WHAT'S THE ICE QUEEN DONE THIS--why are you in your skivvies?!"

"The nightgown was too small and too hot!"

"WELL," Cake said, "lemme get you something else. And get out of the bathroom, what is everyone doing in here, that's weird!"

"Yeah, stop being weird!" Fionna shouted, still covering her eyes.

Ice Queen dutifully made her way back to her temporary bed, leaving the bathroom free for Fionna. The penguins never minded nudity, but Fionna wasn't a penguin.

Cake came back with an over-large T-shirt adorned with Marshall Lee's bat-face.

"How _do_ you let someone know you like them without kidnapping?" Ice Queen asked, putting it on backwards so Marshall Lee couldn't judge her. It was just a T-shirt, yeah right, Ice Queen had heard _that_ one before.

"Excuse me?" Cake asked.

Ice Queen ignored that Cake had obviously been about to leave. "Isn't kidnapping the clearest message for feelings?"

"NO," Cake said, so adamant she puffed up twice her normal size. "No, it is _not_ , Ice Queen! You managed all right when you were pretending to be Prince Gumball, what's so tough about just being yourself at the same time?" She was shouting by the end, and Fionna shouted down from the top of the treehouse that _some_ people were trying to sleep, here.

"All right, all right, don't get your knickers in a twist!" Ice Queen shouted back.

But what Cake said stuck with her as she lied awake on the couch, and even through her dreams. It gave her some ideas.

*

Her first idea was not… as well-executed as it could have been. It turned out that centuries of having penguins taking care of you did not leave one well equipped to make a romantic breakfast for a girl.

"Ta-dah," Ice queen tried, holding out the only plate that was at all presentable. It had just been eggs at first, until Ice Queen realized that maybe eggs by themselves weren't romantic anyway, but somehow adding chocolate and strawberries and that smoked salmon she'd found at the bottom of the ice box hadn't really done the trick, and by that point the eggs were burned and Ice Queen got a little frustrated and took it out on the frying pan and, by association, the stove.

"What's that smell?" Cake asked suspiciously.

Ice Queen shuffled a little further in front of the stove. What they couldn't see couldn't hurt them.

"I think Cake and I are gonna go to the Candy Kingdom for breakfast," Fionna said.

So it wasn't exactly a success. Ice Queen couldn't stop thinking about her failure for the rest of the day, though Fionna and Cake's sugar-coated return made for a good distraction--Fionna somehow managed to get powdered sugar on her knees and Ice Queen could hardly dare to look at them--and then Fionna taught Ice Queen how to play Card Wars, which took up the rest of the afternoon. Fionna was a ruthless strategist, which Ice Queen found both infuriating and endlessly fascinating.

"How did I not know you were such an evil _nerd_?" Ice Queen demanded as Fionna had one of her cards learn _Raise Hipster Batallion_.

"I'm not an evil nerd!" Fionna said, even as she used her new hipster batallion to out-cool all of Ice Queen's animal banjo-players, the ones she'd spent four turns readying. "And besides, there's tons of stuff you don't know about me."

"Aren't you guys done yet?" Cake interrupted, still annoyed about being summarily disallowed from playing at all.

Ice Queen said _no_ , but Fionna assured Cake they were almost through.

Fionna was right. And just as infuriating and fascinating when it came to videogames, it turned out.

*

The next day, when Fionna and Cake were practicing hand-to-hand fighting techniques, Ice Queen thought perhaps compliments would be better appreciated. Who didn't like being told they were good at something? Ice Queen definitely never got tired of it.

"Your style is so different now!" Ice Queen called out from under the shade of the treehouse. She thought she had achieved a properly admiring tone, but Fionna and Cake looked merely disgruntled.

"I had to learn something new since I don't really trust swords anymore," Fionna said.

"Oh," Ice Queen said. "Well you've...made a good choice."

She hid out the rest of the afternoon inside, away from Fionna and Cake and even Beemo. Morose, she ended up fixing the stove and even the ice box when she realized it was keeping things unevenly cold. She wasn't as mechanically minded as she could be, but anyone who could keep their underground lairs from collapsing had to know something about physics, right? Tinkering all afternoon kept her busy, and even if she ended up covered in grease--hah, Marshall Lee's face on the back of the shirt wouldn't ever look the same--at least all the treehouse residents seemed pleased by the addition of non-soupy ice cream to their dinner.

*

Seriously, though, what would she do if she were Prince Gumball? Maybe--maybe she could write Fionna a song? Ice Queen was creative and talented--she'd never had any complaints about those areas from any of her forced houseguests, anyway--so surely she could wrangle up a tune that Fionna would enjoy.

But it turned out that Fionna really wasn't that into hair metal power ballads.

It was such a conundrum of sensations; Ice Queen felt almost _itchy_ with both wanting and having Fionna's attention, and the disappointment at displeasing her left a bad taste in her mouth, like old cheese. She couldn't think of anything else, though; she wasn't _actually_ Prince Gumball, and now that she didn't want to marry him, she was even less inclined to think about him or how he worked.

That night, Ice Queen stared out the window in the direction of her land and thought very seriously about her priorities. In her borrowed T-shirt and with the wood floor beneath her bare toes, it was difficult to remember that she wasn't only this person who mooned around after a girl who'd realistically been more of an enemy than anything else. She had to toughen up and remember who she really was! --Ice Queen!! Commander of Ice and Snow, More Beautiful and Terrible than an Ice Duke or an Ice Lady!!

"Woah, it's cold down here!"

Ice Queen jumped, and belatedly tried to make her jump turn into something suave mid-air, but instead nearly broke her ankle on the--yes, the sheet of ice spreading out from where she'd been standing. "Whoops, sorry about that," she said.

"No, it's--it's kind of cool? Heh, I mean, you know--pun unintended." Fionna smiled.

After Ice Queen banished away the slippery surface, Fionna padded over to the window to join her. "What are you looking at?"

"Ice Queendom, or, where it used to be. And will be again!" It was hard to be impressive as a queen without a land to rule, after all.

"Right," Fionna said, looking down. "I really am sorry about that."

Ice Queen didn't know what to do with a penitent Fionna. Well, she knew what she _used_ to want to do with her--but it was tough to think about those scenarios now, when all she really wanted was truly ridiculous things like for Fionna to smile--and not just because she was a person inclined towards smiling, but because Ice Queen made her smile.

That kind of thinking made her want to banish _herself_ away, so. "No harm, no foul," Ice Queen said, "though I guess technically there was harm--anyway. Thanks for letting me stay in your treehouse. It's been nice, you know, getting to know you home better. --You, getting to know _you_ better."

Fionna did smile, then, though Ice Queen wasn't sure if smiling because of her idiocy was really the result she wanted; whatever, she'd take it.

*

All too soon, the penguins sent word that the Ice Queendom was ready for its ruler to return.

"We'll be seeing you," Fionna said, something hesitant in her voice that Ice Queen couldn't quite identify.

"I'm sure you will, once I'm back to the grind and kidnapping princes and stuff, you know."

Fionna huffed out a breath, irritated. "You don't have to do that junk, you know. You're… you're pretty cool when you're not being terrible."

"I--thank you," Ice Queen said, strangely touched. She felt like exploding again, or growing a thousand feet tall so the feelings that she got when she looked at Fionna's face would be of a more appropriate size. "You know, if you wanted to be my child bride, I wouldn't need to kidnap princes at all," she proposed.

"Ice Queen!" Cake hissed, "This is not the proper way to woo!"

"Well I tried the proper ways and none of them worked!" Ice Queen complained. "What do you think, Fionna? Wanna marry me so I don't go back into a life of crime?"

Fionna sputtered, and then exploded with fierce and entrancing outrage. "You can't BLACKMAIL me into marrying you! Or even, like, dating! If you actually liked me, how would that even work!!"

"Shows what you know: I _do_ actually like you! Why do I want to date you anyway!" She adjusted her tiara and prepared with the last of her pride to fly back to the Ice Queendom, roiling and uncertain in ways she was distinctly ill-prepared to handle.

But then there was Fionna again, ruining everything about a good exit. "Wait! I just--I thought I was making it up but… were you trying to ask me out for real, all this week? I just--why?"

"You don't need me to tell you how cool you are, Fionna!" But Ice Queen couldn't help adding, quietly and more sincere than she'd been in a long while, "Your eyes really do sparkle, it's amazing."

With that, she flew off back to the Ice Queendom and her penguins and her perfect-temperature blankets, ignoring that it felt more like a retreat than a homecoming.

*

She only had a few hours to mope around designing new slush monsters and ice weaponry before the doorbell rang. "Oh, we have a doorbell now, do we? Why would we want that?" she heckled the penguins, sitting at her drawing board and letting one of them answer it.

"Ice Queen!"

Ice Queen supposed she shouldn't be surprised by Fionna's sudden appearance in her home, as that was pretty typical behavior for her. She still felt a swelling up inside that she finally acknowledged was in line with liking someone a lot and embarrassing yourself in front of them, two emotions Ice Queen hadn't felt in such a long time that it had taken the penguins bringing out her slide projector for her to remember.

"You might as well come in," Ice Queen said ungraciously, gesturing to one of the ice loveseats and smiling weakly around the words despite herself.

"Thanks," Fionna said, cheeks pinking. "I'm not sure I've ever used the front door with permission before."

"Typically you are interrupting a romantic kidnapping, so that's understandable." Ice Queen didn't want to be weird by sitting back down at her drawing board, so she sat next to Fionna on the loveseat. It was really quite small for two people, she didn't understand why you'd want something where you could feel the object of your affection's every shiver and the blush of heat where their skin was close to yours.

There was a muttering about romantic kidnapping coming from inside Fionna's backpack--Cake, Ice Queen assumed, and then dismissed as unimportant when Fionna cleared her throat.

"I don't know if you remember, but after you pretended to be Prince Gumball, I said the reason I have a lot of guy friends and no boyfriend is because I don't _want_ a boyfriend, but I think it's also because… like…" Her shoulders went up and her face turned a deeper red, "Because you're really confusing! Why are you always kidnapping dudes when you clearly don't even _like_ them! But other times you can be, uh, sweet?" Fionna met Ice Queen's eyes for a single glance, as if confirming that Ice Queen was paying attention--as if Ice Queen might be looking at anything else. "Uh, anyway, I guess I will go on a date with you, if you're still interested."

Ice Queen's heart bloated up with emotion, sticking in her throat. "I will show you all my nicest caves, Fionna." She slid her hand across the bare inches between them and let it rest on top of Fionna's; Fionna gratifyingly turned her hand palm up, tangling their fingers and squeezing a little too hard. Maybe Fionna was also having feelings in her body and too-hard hand-holding was the only way her heroine's strength could reveal it?

"That sounds--that sounds like something." Fionna brushed her bangs off her forehead, her eyes big and sparkling.

"Now kiss!!" Cake shouted from inside the backpack.

"Heh heh, oh Cake," Fionna said, but Ice Queen took the command as intended, careful of her teeth, eager to find out if Fionna was as heroic with her lips.

(She was.)


End file.
